To stay awake, she cranked up the AC to keep herself uncomfortably chilled and listened to one of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch crime novels. Bosch was an LAPD detective who, over a thirty-year career that spanned about as many books, solved one major murder after another and yet his bosses still doubted his skill and integrity, regularly undermined his work, and repeatedly investigated him for misconduct. It frustrated her even more than it did him. His problem, she thought, was that he didn’t know how to play politics. She’d already proven that she could. Now she had to prove she could do the job.

Eve arrived in Merced at 4:30 a.m. She drove up G Street, past the unoccupied storefronts downtown, under the railroad tracks, and across the dry creek to the bedroom side of town. The shopping centers and homes became more suburban looking the closer she got to the new University of California campus.

Cleve’s neighborhood was full of recently built Spanish-Mediterranean tract houses with FOR SALE and FOR RENT signs in their dead lawns. His home was one of the few without a sign and had an old Chevy Malibu in the driveway. She parked in front of Cleve’s dark house, shut off her engine, and closed her eyes for a moment.

Eve was awakened by someone rapping a knuckle on the driver’s side window. The sun was up, though only barely, and a white guy in a bathrobe and pajamas was standing beside her car, a newspaper tucked under his arm. He was in his thirties, about six feet tall with a paunch, and had dark circles under bloodshot eyes. She rolled down the window.

“Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”

“I was just wondering why a police officer is parked in front of my house at six in the morning,” he said.

“How do you know I’m a police officer?” she asked. The man took the bubble light off the top of her car and handed it to her. She forgot she’d left it up there. “Are you Cleve Kenworth?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I’m Detective Eve Ronin from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. I’d like to talk with you.”

“You drove all the way up here last night?” he asked.

She nodded. “I got in about an hour or so ago.”

“You should have knocked on the door when you got here.”

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I haven’t been able to sleep. I just sat in the recliner all night, thinking about where Caty and Troy might be.” He wiped a tear from his eye. Now she knew why they were so bloodshot.

“Can I come in?”

He looked back at the house, then at her. “My girlfriend and her kids are up now. Tell you what. I’ll meet you at Paul’s Place in ten minutes. It’s a coffee shop on G Street.”

“I’ll find it,” she said.

She watched Cleve, his shoulders slouched, shuffle back into the house. He was carrying a lot of sadness and she knew he’d soon be carrying a lot more.